Readers' Choice

The Food Channel has really effed up America's eating habits. Now everyone and his brother wants to make hot dogs with goat cheese, pizza with portabella mushrooms, and hamburgers with sun-dried tomatoes. What the hell is wrong with this country? There's no reason to go and mess up perfectly fine, Americana-type food with unnecessary culinary experimentation. That's why it's so hard to find a good bowl of chili. But after wading through a swimming pool full of high-class beef stew masquerading as chili, we finally found some chili con carne worthy of the epithet at a west-side greasy spoon named Susan's Diner. Set the way-back machine for circa 1960-something, and you'll end up at this little white house with a peaked roof. Take a seat at the weathered benches beneath all the pictures of Elvis, and vintage signs advertising stuff like "Babe Ruth underwear." Order a bowl of chili with cheese, and you get a brown mélange thick with beans, ground beef, and just enough spice to tingle your tongue. Fresh Cheddar shavings are piled on top. Mix them in until the cheese melts, and alternate each third spoonful with a sip of a Mr. Pibb-vanilla ice cream float. Later for that Food Channel gourmet-gobbledygook. When we want chili, we're headin' over to Susan's Diner.

When the phrase "casino buffet" passes through your cranium, your gray matter is instantly populated with scores of classy folk chain-smoking Parliament Lights 100s and hoping for a big win at bingo. But Fort McDowell Casino, operated by the Yavapai Nation, actually makes an effort to do things a little differently from other gambling spots, and this extends to its international buffet, which eschews the usual not-ready-for-prime-time rib and rubber chicken Parmesan for authentic Indian, French, seafood and Italian selections.

The Indian section -- as in the country, not America's original inhabitants -- is the most surprising and rewarding, with rotating selections like a stew of lamb, fenugreek and green peas that would not be out of place at a buffet in a South Asian eatery. And there's the spicy "okra in yogurt" that's just as tasty. The Italian section might offer veal Milanese or spaghetti and clam sauce. The French? Pork loin in sherry and/or lyonnaise potatoes. There are also crab legs in butter, fried catfish fillets, a near-pristine salad bar, and a dessert section with bread pudding, cinnamon cake and cream puffs. Yeah, thanks to "The Fort," casino buffets aren't just for geezers anymore.

So you just won a small bundle on the Addams Family slot machine, parlayed that into a larger bundle on an Austin Powers slots, moved your way up to the dollar machines, and finally hit it big playing blackjack in Wild Horse's Vegas-style gaming emporium. That's when a pair of high-class call girls escort you to the limo waiting outside for a night of Beluga caviar, Dom Perignon, and the sort of unbridled wickedness that we can't even begin to allude to here.

Then your wife nudges you and awakens you to reality: You're down $20 after playing the same machine for eight hours straight. Hey, it's not a total loss. At least you can dine like a winner at Wild Horse Pass' Wind Dance Restaurant. Just go for the filet mignon or the surf 'n' turf, dood. Spoil yourself. After all, your gold card isn't maxed out yet, and you can always play keno while you chew. Sure, we've never heard of anyone winning the mother lode with keno, but for God's sake, let a man dream, will you!

We're suckers for excellent Southwestern fare, especially when served in a classic Southwestern ambiance. So it may be no great surprise that our pick for the best new restaurant of the year is the Sierra Bonita Grill, formerly a bar known as the Copper Queen.

After much work by Sheldon Knapp, the SB's owner and also the owner of the Phoenix City Grille, the new eatery is a gorgeous salute to the ranch-houses of old, with ceilings of dark wooden beams, Cherokee red flooring, and walls inside and out that have that charming adobe look to them. The food is the perfect companion to the eatery's aura: buttermilk chicken with mashed sweet potatoes; cowboy stew, featuring chunks of beef in a piquant brown mélange; rainbow trout in a maple-butter sauce; green chile posole; and for dessert, a Oaxacan chocolate soufflé with roasted banana ice cream.

El Chorro Lodge is cool. Barry Goldwater cool. ¿Comprendes? We'd call it old-school, if it wasn't still cool, an adobe grande dame that can seat 165, with copper lamps on the tables, a copper-topped bar in the lounge, juniper-burning fireplaces, and that hint of Sonoran Desert decadence that still has the power to seduce. The menu is a class act, too: lamb chops with mint jelly; sautéed chicken livers; beef stroganoff; fried lobster tails; a pre-dinner relish tray; and El Chorro's famous "sticky buns" as your dinner's bread. El Chorro even has brandy Alexanders and pink ladies on its drink menu, as well as blended margaritas that'll put your knickers in a twist. For dessert, there's pecan pie, caramel custard flan, and El Chorro's pièce de résistance, chocolate ice box cake made with Belgian chocolate, and walnuts, and topped with fresh cream. Cool? It doesn't get any cooler, baby.

It's probably a given that wunderkind chef William Bradley at the Vu restaurant in Scottsdale's Hyatt Regency is a genius of gastronomy. After all, isn't it a foodie rule of thumb that the bigger the culinary brain, the smaller the portions? Why, we can even foresee the day when highfalutin hash-slingers of the future, empowered by genetically engorged cerebellums, will offer us a mere whiff of their creations, bottled fresh for sniffing, so we need not even open our yaps, save in praise of the kitchen's commandant. True, Chef Bradley's entrees could be smaller, and his sides are even of near-normal size. (Shocking!) But we wonder about the extra-long dinner fork one's given at Vu. Could this be an attempt to make us believe that the servings are smaller than they actually are? Or maybe he's just expecting Shaquille O'Neal to stop by for din-din one of these days. Either way, it makes for the perfect back-scratcher for those hard-to-reach areas. All we want is a spoon large enough to change our contacts in, and we'll be happier than Ron Popeil with a new set of steak knives.